Sustainable agriculture for food security, food safety and food nutrient values within the existing operational land area are three major challenges in the current agriculture research and development. The levels of nutrient losses, pesticides, moisture content, climate change and plant protection aggregates need to be detected at appropriate time to prevent food damage and sustain food security. There is a need for sensors having low detection limits with high selectivity towards the target species present in soil, plants, food, preservatives and storage vessels under ambient conditions. Nanoregime offer ambit a viable tool to promulgate them easily in plant tissues, micro-sized thermocouples and soil moisture probes. Nanoparticles and nanocomposites based materials formulate an interesting branch on account of their unique electrical, optical and spectroscopic properties. The present review aims to integrate the role of nanotechnology in current agriculture sector and amendments required to increase the sensitivity and selectivity of the sensors.